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Glorious Cheese! Sargento Cheese Tasting

Like most parents, I stand in line at the deli counter for my American Cheese order. I never really gave much thought to what I was buying and often just selected the cheapest product (we go through a lot of cheese). I know deli meats are generally packed with sodium, and have assumed there are some other not-so-great differences between deli cheese and the real deal but I never took the time to compare.

Until now.

The Motherhood and Sargento Cheese have provided me a great opportunity to learn a little something about a food item that we eat everyday in our household. I held a cheese tasting party during our usual weekly play date and while the kids enjoyed the toys, the moms got to really examine the differences between processed and real cheese.

There were some amazing things that I never knew about processed cheese that were provided to me via a cheese tasting fact sheet. I was informed that some processed cheeses sit on a store shelf without refrigeration; is cooked into a liquid; and finally it is pumped into plastic packaging. By contrast, Sargento natural cheese is actually cut from a block of cheese and must be refrigerated. Additionally, Sargento cheese typically has 130mg of sodium in a 21g slice while the processed cheese has 250mg of sodium in a 19g slice.

Here is what we learned:

Appearance

We all agreed that the processed cheese had a plastic-like look to it, even after the plastic wrap was removed. The adjectives used to describe it were shiny and glossy. Overall, it looked fake. We couldn’t believe that this was a product that we were all feeding our families and especially our children, as a snack, as grilled cheese or on a sandwich.

The Sargento cheddar cheese had a matte finish and just looked like cheese. The color was pleasant to look at and certainly didn’t appear fake like the processed cheese.

Texture

The processed cheese was rubbery. It was pliable and just wouldn’t break no matter which way my friends and I would bend it. Sure, we could tear the cheese, but how unnatural is it for a food to just bend like rubber? It also felt like you could push into the cheese, with a silly putty type feel.

As for the real cheese, the moment you tried to bend it the cheese would break off. The texture was exactly what you would expect from real cheese, it crumbled and flaked, it wasn’t silky smooth but had a ever-so-slight roughness to it. It reminded me of a brick of cheese that I would cut for a cheese and crackers appetizer.

Smell

I am not a fan of smells. In fact, I boycott certain foods without ever tasting them because of the smell (yogurt is one of these items – never tried it because I can’t get past the smell!). One mom in my playgroup has a background in Chemistry and she mentioned that the processed cheese had a very distinct chemical smell. I couldn’t help but agree.

Where the processed cheese had a chemical odor, the real cheese left us all with watering mouths. It smelled like a rich cheddar even at an arms length.

Taste

Wow. I mean… WOW.

The first thing we noticed was that that processed cheese not only looked like rubber, it tasted like it as well. And it was salty. Very salty. One mom mentioned it “tasted like kids food… like cheap nacho dip” and that it might be “good for grilled cheese but that’s about it”. I personally thought that even though it seemed slimy it was hard to swallow because it didn’t taste like real food.

The Sargento cheddar cheese was dry and certainly not as salty. Your taste buds were definitely able to savor the cheese and all the flavors in it. There was also a pleasant after taste to the cheese. I found myself reaching for another slice of cheese right away!

This cheese tasting experiment was nothing short of an amazing revelation. I believe it’s completely changed my approach to purchasing sliced cheese for my family. I can also see how why my older son sometimes makes a bitter face and passes on the slice of cheese placed in front of him – it’s gross! From now on we’ll all get the “real deal” when it comes to cheese!

*Disclosure: The Motherhood and Sargento provided the product for review and also a stipend for this post. Product information regarding cooking process and sodium content was provided to me for this campaign. All opinions expressed are the honest opinions of the party participants.

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Comments

Great test! We all need to get back to “real” foods prehaps that is why our grandparents are living into their 80’s – 90’s – 100’s. They only ate real food from their gardens and from “the farm” milk, eggs, cheese etc. My gramma is 87 and still gardening at her home she’s been on for 65 years!